Dean sucks in a deep breath that lifts him off the ground with the force of it. He chokes a few times as his lungs get used to pushing air out again. Blood begins to pump and his heart regains its beat. His shirt is stiff with his own drying blood and it sticks to his body. When he pushes up to a sitting position, his hand slides against the floor, slick with the pool of deep red fluid.
Dean blinks his eyes to re-orientate himself. Cas and Sam aren't in front of him anymore like when he... died. He looks around until he sees them. Cas is no longer holding his side, but punching Sam until he slumps to the ground. Cas just grabs him by the collar to hold him up. Snarling, Sam hits Cas in the gut but he doesn't even flinch.. despite the hole in his side still leaking blood and grace.
Dean gets to his feet and yells gruffly, "Hey! Stop it! Sam! Cas!"
They're in their own little world of violence and continue grappling with each other, looking to do the most damage.
Dean puts a hand on each shoulder and pulls them apart.
"Hey! The bell rang. Rounds over!"
Sam's the first to stop and stand there with his mouth open.
"Dean..?"
Cas almost lands another hit but Dean swings him around by the arm. Shifting his grip to the back of his neck, he forces Cas to face him. "Hey! Cas. Look at me."
His cold blank expression falls away when he focuses on Dean, only a few inches away. Blue eyes, that are still red-rimmed, widen. He quickly darts a look to Sam as if he doesn't really understand. Sam's hand is shaking as he grabs Dean's shoulder, the leather jacket bunching in his fingers.
"Dean, I can't.. I'm-"
Cas drops to the floor like his strings have been cut.
"Cas?!" Dean crouches down and cups his head. He isn't moving.
"Sam. Bring the car to the door and I swear to Chuck if you even look at him funny I'll kick your ass into next Tuesday."
"Ok." Sam starts moving. "Wait, Chuck?"
"Fucking go!"
Dean puts an arm around Cas' back, gingerly trying to avoid his massive wound. Slinging his limp arm over his own shoulders, he walks them slowly towards the car. He gets in the backseat and drags Cas' body in to lay in his lap. Back against his thighs. Head held up by Dean's arm.
Sam shuts the door behind them and gets in the front.
Dean's hand hovers over his face not knowing what to do.
Cas is so still.
Fisting his hands in Cas' coat, Dean prays and imagines Chuck now, sitting on the grass with legs bent. Just patiently listening.
"Please. Don't have sent me back just to see this. Don't you fucking do this to me."
His eyes burn with unshed tears, but he ignores it. He can't stop touching Cas' slack face as his brother drives. His thumb leaves behind a smear of blood on his cheek. Keeping up a steady stream of pleading for his life, he strokes Cas' lips.
"Don't let him die. Not now, dammit."
He brushes his temple. Cheekbone. Stubbled Jaw. Runs fingers through messy hair that is always sticking up. The space between his eyebrows that furrows so often. It's smooth and untroubled now. As he makes another pass over it with his thumb, he feels the skin there crinkle.
Cas slowly opens his eyes to see Dean's. Dean cups the side of his face, firmly.
"Cas?"
The angel gives a small smile then turns his face into Dean's hand and falls back unconscious.
They're finally at the motel. Sam opens the door and grabs an arm. They manage to get him in their room without anyone seeing and shrieking off to the cops.
He's laid on Dean's bed, pain etched all over his usually stoic face.
"Cas. What do you need? What can I do?"
"Holy.. Holy oil." He says with his eyes shut, through clenched teeth.
Dean looks at Sam who instantly runs out to the Impala. He grabs Cas' hand and lets him almost break it with his grip.
Sam rushes back and gives Dean the bottle. Cas' hold is starting to slacken.
"Hey, ya still with me? What now?"
He takes a few quick breathes and gets out, "Pour a few drops on a blade. Light it-" He pauses to wince. "Light it until it scorches the steel and lay it against-" He has to stop again.
"Okay. It's okay. I got it."
Dean quickly reaches for his bowie. Drips a little oil on its flat side. Before he even has to turn to him, Sam hands him a zippo.
Setting the knife down on the bedside table, he sits down on the bed next to Cas and hastily undoes the buttons of his ruined shirt. He gently pulls it open to expose the nasty injury. Cas tenses.
"I know. It'll be ok. Just stay with me a little longer."
He unbuckles Cas' belt and pulls it free of the loops to hold up to his lips. Cas' isn't acknowledging him.
"Cas, C'mon. Bite down on this."
He takes it between his teeth with eyes still closed.
Grabbing the knife, Dean flicks open the lighter, and ignites it to run over the oil-smeared steel. It catches fire for a second but burns out leaving it slightly blackened. He hesitates, eyes darting over Cas… already tensed tight in anguish.
"Okay, hold on. I want you to think about uh-. " He stops, searching. "Think about the bar that night. That stupid cake. You were jealous. You got my attention, right? You knew I would say yes even before I did. You're there, okay?"
Cas nods, eyebrows furrowed.
"Remember that and everything after. Got it?"
He smiles weakly.
Dean holds a breath and lays the blade flat against ragged and torn skin.
Cas' legs kick at the mattress, pushing him up as he writhes. Dean lays his arm along his torso to keep him down, when his back arches. He screams and the belt falls from his mouth. He turns his head into a pillow and his open-mouthed noises of pain are muffled.
"You're okay. I'm here, Cas. You're doing good. Really good. Almost done."
Hands fisted in the sheets, he slowly relaxes back into the bed.
Fuck it hurts to see this. To be the one doing it.
Dean pulls away the knife and there's an angry red and black wedge in the shape of the blade across where the wound had been. Blood and grace are no longer trickling out.
Cas is heaving with labored breathes. "The.. the other one too."
Dean grimaces at having to do it again but starts cutting the shirt off his upper body. Cas lies there, fading in and out as Dean pulls the arms of his coat off him. He's dead weight, not helping at all. When Dean's done, Cas is bare from the waist up and he can see the hole in his right shoulder. He repeats the process of readying the knife.
Getting up on a knee, he leans over Cas and braces his free hand on his bicep. He glances at his face and their eyes meet. Cas blinks once before closing his eyes again.
The blade covers the gash.
Cas fights upward involuntarily for a few moments. Dean lurches his upper body forward to hold him down hard.
"You're doing so good. I promise it's almost over." He says against Cas' temple.
Cas clutches at Dean's arms as he's held in place. Rubbing his lips against his skin, Dean tries to make soothing noises.
Finally Dean can lift the knife away and it's done. When he looks down, Cas is unconscious..
He compulsively checks on Cas' breathing every few minutes, looking to see if his chest is still rising and falling. Not that he'd know what to do if it wasn't but he's trying not to think about that.
Sam doesn't say much. Nothing about Dean popping back to the land of the living. Nothing about Cas and him almost killing each other. He just waits for Dean to ask him to do or get something.
Dean takes a bowl of warm water and gently washes blood off Cas' chest. Sam watches and doesn't say anything about that either. He's sent to get bandages and Dean dresses the wounds as if he were human. It couldn't hurt and he doesn't know what else to do. He doesn't know if it matters or not but it makes him feel like he's actively doing something.
Halfway through binding his shoulder wound, Cas wakes up for a moment.
"Dean?" he gasps.
"Yeah, Cas."
"You're.. gone."
"No, I'm right here."
His eyes roll back for a minute and it seems he's out again but then he continues.
"No, you're gone. Always gone. Always leaving or dieing or.."
Dean pushes him back down by his good shoulder.
"Shh. I'm here. You gotta lay back. Everything's ok."
Cas lets himself be pressed back down and groans.
"Shh. Rest.. It'll be alright. I'm with you."
Cas goes back out.
After another hour of feeling helpless, Dean gets up and takes Cas' shoes, socks and pants off. He doesn't look his brother's way the whole time as he goes to grab some sweat pants and pulls them over Cas' blue boxers he'd see so often recently. When he starts to gently tug at the sweat and blood soiled bedspread under him, Sam appears on the other side of the bed.
"Here, you hold him up. I'll get it."
They manage to remove it without jarring the hurt angel too much.
Dean notices they both look like warmed over shit. "Go get a shower, Sammy."
Sam hesitates and when Dean turns back to Castiel, he grabs him into a rough hug. Dean returns it and after long minutes, he pushes Sam towards the bathroom.
Sam eventually falls asleep on his bed. Dean's leaning back on the legs of a chair he dragged between the beds, staring up at the lightbulb maintenance must have come in and replaced while they were gone. Probably while he was dead.
"Dean."
"Cas?" He sits forward, dropping the chair so all legs are on the floor.
Cas pushes himself up with his arms till he's sitting up against the headboard and hisses in pain.
"Hey, easy. You almost bought it and I don't think clapping brings you guys back."
Cas winces again as he settles in place.
"I can assure you, it does not."
Dean sits on the bed next to him.
"You gonna make it?" He voice is gruff but at least it's steady.
"Since I lasted through the night, it would appear I will survive."
Cas looks down at his naked chest before pressing fingers to the bandages.
"Yeah, Uh, I had to cut off your shirt."
"I see that."
Dean is staring at him, but Cas doesn't add anything else. He watches Cas slowly peel back the medical tape on his abdomen. With him awake and out of the woods, Dean can't help enjoying the way the muscles around his flat stomach move. It's so damn good to see him lucid and not cringing in pain. He gets a little lost in a memory of working his way down that chest.
Cas seems to notice his staring or maybe he caught a stray thought because he frowns and looks straight at Dean.
"I'll need another shirt."
Dean shakes himself. "Yeah, sure."
He goes to his own duffel bag and grabs him a faded Van Halen shirt, even though Sam's clothes would probably fit better. On his way back he says, "So you can't just zap your shirt back together, huh?"
"No, I-"
Dean goes to lift the shirt over his head.
"Dean, I can do it."
"Shut up, Cas."
He gently pulls his arms through the holes.
Huffing, Cas growls out, "No, I won't be zapping anything for a while."
Cas almost looks cute in his oversized t-shirt. The emotional toll of the last few days makes him want to laugh and cry for no reason. Between finding out Sam was trying to kill Cas, to breaking it off with him, to fucking dying.. and then watching Cas almost die, he needed a stiff drink.
Dean tries to grab Cas' hand but he shifts it away before their fingers touch.
"What happened? Why are you.. here?"
"Oh, well Ch-..God brought me back."
"He just.. resurrected you?"
"Yeah, it's.. I'll tell you the whole crazy thing later. You still look pretty rough."
Cas' face is scrunched so seriously.
Dean smiles and thinks really hard about kissing him breathless so he's not frowning anymore. If he didn't still look so drained, Dean would probably not be able to help it.
"Dean. I am.. You can not fathom how glad I am that you are alive.. sitting here."
Cas' hand shakes as he moves it to almost touch Dean's but he closes it. Dean feels him withdrawing.
"But you need to give me space."
Dean doesn't even smile when he hears the verbal quote marks he adds. Space.. a word he's pretty sure Cas read in some chick magazine about relationship advice. He's never hated a word more.
"Cas. Before.. I didn't mean that. With Sam going AWOL, I had to-"
"I know why you did it."
"What?"
"I remember when you told me to wipe Ben and Lisa's memory of you." Cas says evenly. "And in Purgatory. I pushed you through the portal.. forced myself to let go of your hand. So I do understand."
"Awesome, then you know that crap was just to get you outta the way.. though I guess it ended up doing a pretty piss poor job."
He's quiet, not lifting his head to meet Dean's anxious eyes.
"Cas?"
"I know why but.. I'm tired Dean. I can't just go back as we were. You push me away.. It's as if you're looking for an excuse."
"Cas, no."
"I don't have.. experience with this, but I know it hurts worse every time. I'm unable to just forget the pain as you do. Everytime I have to let you go it's harder for me." Cas bites his lip and continues. "And you were right, you don't need me anymore."
"C'mon that's bullshit. I was just saying that-"
"It doesn't mean it was not the truth. What we were doing.. you can move on."
"I don't want to. Dammit, I know how much of a dumbass I've been.. but we can start over now. We're both here and alive and-"
"Perhaps I do." It cuts through everything else Dean was going to say.
"Goddammit Cas, don't do this."
"I need to rest. My wound is not healing as quickly as I would have hoped. It will be several days more at least as is."
He turns a little to the side and closes his eyes. Dean stares at his back helplessly.
He replays their short conversation for hours afterwards. It's like a sore spot in his mouth that would stop hurting if he would only stop prodding it with his tongue. Over and over. Cas doesn't want him anymore. Is tired of his issues. Tired of being hurt. Well that's fair. Dean is pretty fucking good at screwing up. Why did he think everything would be roses just because they both managed to be alive in the same room together?
The day rolls on to late afternoon. Cas goes in and out of sleeping, something he's never seen him do. Just another sign of how close the angel had been to not making it.
Getting antsy from being cooped up with the same four walls for so long, Dean turns off the tv. Sam looks up at him.
"C'mon, lets get out of here for a little while."
He leaves his cell phone on the bedside table next to Cas and grabs his jacket.
They drive just up the road to a Bar/Grill and order beers and food. While they wait for it, Dean starts talking.
"There was always something there. I didn't.. pay attention to it or like let myself see it too often because.. well ya know."
Sam shakes his head not getting what Dean's not saying.
"The fact that he has different equipment for one thing. Well I guess the same equipment.."
"Yeah, I get it." Sam stops him before they can talk anymore about Celestial penises.
"Obviously I'm not the best with touchy feely talks."
Sam gives him a bitch face and mutters, "Ya think?"
Dean keeps his eyes on the label of his beer that just arrived. "I was diseased Sam and he never looked away no matter how ugly it got. Freaking fought me to let him help." He swallows. "It just kinda snuck up on me. He forced his way in until I didn't realize how much we'd changed. In the beginning, I thought ok I need this now, but afterward we'll go back to.."
He remembers how Cas said he couldn't just go back. His stomach is in knots and it's hard to take a sip of the beer. He fucked that up but Cas had survived so at least he had that.
Sam clears his throat and asks. "So, the uh other stuff.."
Dean runs a hand through his hair and finally brings his eyes up from the table top. "Ok, I'm only going to say this once then we're never ever gonna talk about it again."
His brother raises his eyebrows in invitation.
"It's like .. Imagine that feeling you get when you're all riled up during a fight. The adrenaline's pumping. Bad guy's got a few hits in. For maybe a second you're not sure who's gonna win. Take that excitement and you come kinda close to what it is."
He got that out in maybe one breath and he looks up to see Sam is still staring at him, giving nothing back.
"Cas isn't like hurting me or some shit and I'm not covering with a story about falling into a door knob here. It's..all a part of it and I like it. I mean, I kick big monster ass all day long.. you know I wouldn't be.. I can obviously stop it if I wanted. But I don't.. didn't. Whatever."
Sam's quiet, watching him. Dean sighs at the table and keeps talking because he's nervous and maybe it feels good to get it out.
"You don't gotta understand it. You just have to know I'm happy for once and he does that."
Sam's mouth kinda twists at the corners in a mocking but proud smile. "Good job, Dean. I think that's the most in touch with your feelings you've ever been."
Dean rolls his eyes. "Don't be a douche. This is like worse than sitting through that 3 hour Titanic movie with you."
They laugh together and Dean feels every tense bone in his shoulders and neck release a little.
"So why the hell would you go to that smarmy demon asshole?"
Sam shifts with guilt. "I didn't know what else to do. I had to know what that-."
"Well don't worry about it.. it's gone." He cuts in abruptly. "It was something.. special. Anyway, Enochian doesn't do anything if you're not an angel. Crowley was playing you."
"I got that. But you weren't telling me anything, Dean. Don't tell me you wouldn't have freaked too."
"So the King of Hell is the one you have on speed dial?"
Sam lets go of the defensive tone he'd been building and allows, "Yeah, I know. Dick move."
"Epic dick move." Dean nods before taking a drink.
"I should… when Cas is feeling better, I'll talk to him." After a pause Sam sucks in a deep breath and starts, "Dean, when I-"
"Don't."
"I couldn't stop.. But I tried. Jesus, your blood was everywhere. I thought-"
"Look Sammy. We've cut ourselves up over shit like this for too long. I'm ok. You're ok. Cas is gonna be ok. Let's not make this anymore of a Sandra Bullock movie."
Sam sniffs and coughs to clear his throat. They sit quietly for a bit. It's enough, being back to a good place. Brothers.
"So you and Cas.." Sam says testing it out loud.
"Yeah.."
"You realize you're like corrupting an angel."
Dean laughs. "Dude.. you have no idea how little corrupting he needed."
"Stop."
Grinning Dean adds, "I mean he's done things to me.."
"Ugh enough."
"You would not believe how he-"
"Okay! God my ears are bleeding."
Dean enjoys his brother's mock horror for a minute more before his good mood is dampened.
"It doesn't even matter now. He doesn't wanna go there again."
"Well Dean, you could always try serenading him with AC/DC? Oh wait you don't want him to fly off."
Dean throws a balled up napkin at him. They both take another drink from their bottles.
Smirking Sam says, "So what the hell is this about Chuck being God?"
Author's Notes: Sorry if you had to wait a wee bit longer for this, but at least I left you in a better place last chapter. Adore all your feedback, dears. The next chapter will most likely be the last but fret not.. there will be a sequel/timestamp or two. Do you still love me? I love you.